Loud Lutherans

"Do you know how to tell if someone is Lutheran?" asks Dennis Fakes, a Lutheran pastor. Answer:

"When the minister cracks a joke during the sermon, a Lutheran will smile right out loud." Fakes is a contributing editor for the Joyful Noiseletter, a monthly religious humor publication (RNS).

"The United States goes around the world telling countries that a few more nuclear warheads are dangerous and immoral--while it has 12,000 nukes of its own."

--Columnist Fareed Zakaria (Newsweek, April 17)

"You dare not go against Jim Dobson these days. This is the guru, the new pope. He is infallible. Anybody that contradicts him is obviously out of the will of God."

--Evangelical author and social commentator Tony Campolo, criticizing James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family (Associated Church Press convention)

"The secular left consistently disarms itself of what could be its most powerful weapon: a spiritual vision of the world."

--Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun magazine (from his latest book, The Left Hand of God, excerpted in the Nation, April 24)

"A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it."

--Mary Karr, author of The Liar's Club, at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing

COPYRIGHT 2006 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning